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the Welsh Assembly building - wikimedia

Conflicted
views in Wales about the Scottish referendum were perfectly
encapsulated by First Minister Carwyn Jones’ response to George
Osborne’s belated promise of Devo Max if there is a No vote next
Thursday. "Whatever
further devolution is offered to Scotland must also be offered to
Wales and Northern Ireland," he announced on twitter.

However,
he immediately followed that up with the qualification that full
control of income tax – something the Conservatives and Liberal
Democrats want to give the Scottish Parliament if there is a No vote
- would definitely not be in Wales' interests.

George
Osborne’s intervention was, of course, in response to the first
poll of the campaign suggesting a narrow lead for the Yes camp,
something which would be Labour’s worst nightmare, particularly in
Wales.

For the
brutal fact confronting all Welsh politicians, of whatever colour, is
that under current funding arrangements Wales, unlike Scotland, is
heavily subsidised by England. In broad terms total public
expenditure in Wales, whether by Whitehall or the Welsh Government in
Cardiff Bay, is of the order of £30 billion, of which only about £18
billion is raised within Wales. The balance, around £12 billion,
comes in a subsidy – what the economists deftly call a fiscal
transfer – from the rest of the UK (mainly England) to Wales.

This is
why independence is not on the Welsh agenda in remotely the same way
as it is in Scotland. It is also why Carwyn Jones felt obliged to
provide the following nuanced qualification to his initially bold
stance in demanding for Wales whatever was being offered to No voting
Scots:

"We must be wary of
taking new powers that carry a significant cost without a transfer of
resources. The method and structure of devolution should be the same
across the UK, even if the devolved powers may be different. We need
to assess carefully what is in Wales' best interest. Devolution of
welfare and full income tax devolution would not be."

But
for Wales, just as for England and Northern Ireland, the even remote
possibility that Scotland might vote Yes has changed the political
dynamic. For the moment at least constitutional change is on the
agenda in a way it hasn't been since the referendum that established
the National Assembly seventeen years ago, in September 1997. Wall to
wall coverage in the press and on television has forced it on a
reluctant Welsh consciousness.

Playing
catch up the Welsh population, who normally pay little if any
attention to politics in Cardiff Bay, are scratching their heads and
wondering, often out loud around the dinner table, what all this
might mean for us.

The
main conclusion of a seminar held on the topic by the Institute of
Welsh Affairs in Cardiff Bay last Thursday was that the leadership in
the National Assembly has failed to articulate a strong enough view
of what it wants from the next stage of devolution. Certainly it is
failing to utter loud enough to be heard in the present debate, let
alone to be taken seriously.

One
of the problems was that, given the lack of coherence amongst
the Conservative, Plaid Cymru and Liberal Democrat opposition
parties, the minority Welsh Labour Government was not being held to
account. Professor Laura McAllister, of Liverpool University, said,
“We need a more mature political scene. In Scotland the SNP
reinvented itself to become a realistic party of government. In
Wales we don’t have serious competition. Our politics are
infantile.”

Gerry
Holtham, until recently an economics adviser to the Welsh Government
and formerly chair of the acclaimed Commission on Funding and Finance
Commission for Wales which pointed out the extent to which Whitehall
treats Wales unfairly compared with Scotland, concurred. “We’re a
non story,” he said. “We’ve nothing interesting to say. All we
have to say is ‘Give us more money’. My advice is tend the
garden. Improve policy outcomes with the instruments we’ve got.
Then we would be more persuasive. We have to raise our game.”

There
was a general assumption that despite the apparent movement towards
the Yes campaign in Scotland there would still be a narrow No vote.
This was accompanied by a view that this would be followed by a
minority Labour or Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition at Westminster
at the general election next May.

In
these circumstances the extent to which any Devo Max proposals were
kept on the agenda would depend on the SNPs success at the 2015
Westminster election and even more at the Holyrood election in 2016.
If an SNP government were returned in 2016, as was thought likely,
this would be seen as a mandate for a re-run of an independence
referendum before 2020.

The
main challenge for Wales would be ensuring that Welsh interests were
included and embraced in whatever changes were made to the devolution
settlement in Scotland in the meantime. There was much discussion,
for example, of how Wales might take advantage of any Constitutional
Convention that might emerge following a No vote. What pressure could
be brought to ensure that this applied to the whole of the UK and not
just Scotland?

All
this was the comfort zone preoccupations of what has become known as
the Cardiff Bay bubble. Little attention was given to the
consequences for Wales of a Yes vote next week. If this happens real
thinking will begin the morning after.